100 Proof

They met over a quesadilla served on a plastic plate. The taqueria booth table looked like it hadn’t been wiped down in months, but the tomatoes in the salsa fresca were bright and fresh, and the onion sweet.

The carnitas would be too much without the salsa, she said. The fat needs acid so it doesn’t overwhelm.

What about the cheese? he asked.

We all need something to bind us together.

He touched the tortilla-soft inside of her wrist. He chewed slowly, hoping to stretch his half of the quesadilla long enough to tell her he loved her.

At 3:30 pm, she reached for the glass, where a curved lemon wedge floated in the water like a yellow, waning moon. She wanted to read it as a signal that she could leave her desk and go, immediately, before it withered to nothing.

Nobody follow me, she wanted to say, backing out the door while holding the glass in front of her like a shield. It’s safer if I’m the only one who escapes.

They all fell silent then, eyes closed during that long minute before the bells pealed. The girl at the back of the room went somewhere deep inside herself to a place as purple as night, and the man by the window let the incoming sunbeams rest on his forearm. The tightly-woven carpet threads settled under their collective weight. Outside, the world hummed, low and mechanical. Outside, a recorded voice inside a passing bus announced the next stop.

They had been in the house all day, and the moon faded in as the sun sank down the street.

I’d like a piece of that moon, she said, and she put a palm to the windowpane between her and the sky.

We’d all like a piece of it, he said.

He took a sip of cold tea and an ice cube escaped the glass onto his tongue. He rolled it around there, thinking it must just be like that piece of moon, cold and hard, and she danced around the living room, ordinary and strange in the twilight.

Papers scattered across a desk, warm wind blowing through an open attic window—these are her distractions from the work of sewing sleeves on tiny jackets. Time is short now, and she feels hands push on the inner wall of her belly, feet lodge between kidney and spine. She reminds herself she’ll miss this feeling later, that she’ll dream of it, sometimes, years from now, when the wind no longer feels quite as close.

By 3 am, the dreams rushed past her like people on a busy street, each clutching their story in purses and briefcases. This one turned right, this one stopped at a newstand, this one walked slower than the rest with tears rolling down pallid cheeks. In the morning, she remembered the ringed hand of one, the crushed velvet jacket of another. In the morning, she conjured up the feel of the dream she stopped and invited to dinner, course after course served as part of a formal, narrative feast.

Outside, bees dipped feverishly in and out of blossoms on each tree branch. There were so many of them—it was as if they had never disappeared, as if their manic buzz had not been stilled for a moment. She watched them, wondering where they went that year, the year there was no fruit. She wondered how they stayed so focused on their task, as if they had no idea they’d once been gone, as if they had no idea they might, someday, be silenced once more.